[andrewclunn]

So no more dishwasher machines, forget self driving cars, bring back elevator operators, and have more laws like requiring gas station attendants in New Jersey... What a horrible notion that impeding progress to give people pointless work, which makes things less convenient and efficient, is somehow a fix. The population has gone from 1 to near 7 billion people in just over a hundred years. Economic incentives against just having more unskilled labor is not a flaw that needs fixing, it's or economic and environmental necessities coming into alignment, telling us that having 4+ kids is a bad idea in a world as overpopulated as this, and instead to have smaller families with more resources put into educating the one or two kids we do have

[ethanbond]

I don't see how this addresses the point that millions of people are suffering due to automation. Are you saying only the well off should be able to have kids?

[andrewclunn]

I'm saying that the solution to this problem won't come from creating fake work to trick people into thinking that they're productive members of society.

And honestly everyone should be having fewer kids, but the well off already are. Turns out that evolutionary and economic forces of selection don't favor people reproducing beyond their means. People can mistake this emergent property for a planned eugenics program and blame the messenger whenever somebody speaks the truth, but better to realize that wanting all human life to have some intrinsic market value does not make it so and plan accordingly.

[ethanbond]

"everyone should be having fewer kids, but the well of already are" seems directly contradictory to "evolutionary and economic forces don't favor people reproducing beyond their means."

[Jedd]

The answer is not necessarily less automation, but more interesting conversations about how societies cater for less manual labour jobs in the future.

It's not a particular new thought -- the mythical Ned Ludd (and band) were concerned about how the transition happened, not (as they are popular portrayed) simply committed to stopping any kind of progress.

It's naive to imagine that we can will away any kind of technological progress, simply because our parents believed (and indoctrinated us into believing) that we are all entitled to work 9 hours a day, 5 days a week, 45 years of our lives ... and that any attempt to infringe on that ersatz freedom is a personal attack, and any discussion around alternatives is akin to calling someone's god(s) a fraud.

Consider the ever erudite John Ralston Saul's comments from his fantastic work The Doubter's Companion:

" 'Luddites' - Highly trained individuals whose careers were destroyed by technological progress. This progress was treated as inevitable and uncontrollable. The Luddites therefore occupied the only remaining intellectual position, which consisted of rejecting technological progress.

"This reduction of attitudes to two extreme positions was accomplished between 1811 and 1830 when the introduction of Watt’s steam-engines and water-driven wool-finishing machines made hundreds of handicraftsmen redundant.

"Industrialization was spreading from sector to sector and quickly eliminated most crafts along with tens of thousands of jobs.

"The Luddites (named after an imaginary leader, Ned Lud) broke up and burnt factories. Their revolt ended in a group trial in 1813. Five were hanged. The attitude of society towards unrestrained technological progress was made perfectly clear. The judge said the Luddites’ actions were “one of the greatest atrocities that was ever committed in a civilized country.”1

"This was a classic case of provocation and order versus despair and disorder. Wilfrid Laurier described the nature of this type of conflict when he spoke in 1886 about the Riel Rebellion. “What is hateful…is not rebellion, but the despotism which induces that rebellion; not rebels but the men who, having the enjoyment of power, do not discharge the duties of power; the men who, when they are asked for a loaf, give a stone.”2

"What society misunderstood early in the nineteenth century when faced by the industrial revolution was the full nature of the change. The debate should not have been over whether there should be technological progress or not. It was more accurately a question of progress in what conditions: what progress, when, in what circumstances? Market extremists would argue that what happened was inevitable and eventually brought general prosperity. Their view ignores the social disorder, followed by suffering, followed by serious social disorder that this approach towards change brought on. Communism was the direct result. England, France, Germany and Sweden suffered recurring internal violence throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, some of it expanding into civil wars. Most of these countries passed within a shadow of revolution.

"The question is therefore not whether technological progress was necessary, but whether it was necessary to go about it in a barbaric manner. It can be argued that the Luddites were wrong in 1811. But society spent the next 150 years rendering progress civilized and thereby proving that the infuriated craftsmen had been right at least in spirit. Did these decades of wasted time, effort, lives and money represent an intelligent use of human talents?"